edward-noe commented 3 years ago

This PR adds serialization for CAN messages using a modified version of cereal. This has a few advantages over our existing approach:

We no longer rely on implementation-defined behavior (struct padding)
We can serialize arrays and other complex types
We can easily store booleans efficiently (without using bit manipulation directly) using bitsets

This PR mostly adds serialization code, but it also changes the CANInterface definition to hide direct access to CAN and other class fields.

I've tested this on my dev board, but we should test on a real PCB before merging this.

edward-noe commented 3 years ago

This PR isn't working on actual boards right now, possibly related to flash memory limits, so there's no need to review this ATM.

edward-noe commented 3 years ago

This PR did not work on the PowerAux or Solar boards. I looked into the issue briefly, and it seems related the amount of flash memory available. I think it may have been possible to get it working, but, even if I got it working, I don't think we should use so much flash just for serialization.

37 is an alternative to this PR that does not significantly increase flash memory usage.

solarcaratuva / Rivanna2

CAN Serialization #35

37 is an alternative to this PR that does not significantly increase flash memory usage.